580 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the family is so undutiful as not to look to his interests he has his remedy in a court of law. He can even claim partition. Every student of Hindu Law knows that while a minor has very restricted rights to claim partition in Hindu Law, if the father or the manager or karta of the family abuses his power to the detriment and prejudice of the minor, he has the legal remedy open to him and he can proceed in a court of law to enforce his right to partition. That is a valuable right and you are taking away that valuable right.
Similarly you say that in clause 126 you have provided for the maintenance of the wife and in clause 128 you have provided for the maintenance of children and aged parents. If a husband happens to be penniless, if he cannot earn, if he has got nothing to support himself, how can he support his wife ? Therefore I submit that this pseudo right conceded to the wife is only a sham and a paper right. In the present Hindu Law every wife, every female has a valuable right of residence and of maintenance and she can enforce the right through a court of law if the manager or the karta abuses the right.
Shri L. Krishnaswami Bharathi: Even if her husband is penniless ?
Pandit Mukut Bihari Lal Bhargava : I am talking of joint family property. The matter will be different if you decide by a piece of legislation that every piece of property is to disappear and there should be socialisation and nationalisation of every property. But, keeping intact the institution of joint family you are depriving the minors, the widows and the females of their valuable rights which exist under the present Hindu law. In the name of equality which is sham and paper equality you are perpetrating a wrong which it will be very difficult to remedy. My submission therefore is that judging from every point of view this piece of legislation is not only opposed to the accepted principles of Hindu Law but is liable to create such confussion in Hindu Society which it will be very difficult to overcome or remedy.
Sir, before I conclude I have to sum up what I stated on the 2nd of April and now. I said that there is absolutely no necessity and no desirability of the codification of Hindu Law. It is neither necessary nor desirable. It is not wanted by judicial opinion in the country. There is no conflict of authority of such a series character as to warrant the interference of a Legislature. There is no public demand for a measure of this character. The quntum of evidence upon which the Rau Committee relied was analysed by me in my speech on the 2nd